


Status Quo

by romanticalgirl



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gen, Minor Violence, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28686420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: It's been over a year since Steve disappeared, and Bucky has moved on. No question.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 56





	Status Quo

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the location+word prompt of "Chicago/heartbreak"

The snow is dirty, a dingy gray even as it falls. There's piles of it on the sides of the sidewalks, built up like a wall whenever the snow plows come through. The grit and the ice in the treads of his boots are loud in his ears, louder than the shouts and songs and bells that signify the holiday season.

He's alone here. He's sick with it, the loneliness and heartbreak. Left behind. 

He hadn't fled, no matter how much he'd wanted to. He'd stayed behind and helped with the wake of destruction. He'd spent months, almost a year, rebuilding everything Thanos had destroyed. Men and women and children displaced and replaced had to find a new way in the world. There weren't enough doctors to deal with the wake of death that followed when planes appeared in the air, disrupting flight patterns, crashes of cars, the sick and dying suddenly appearing in hospitals already unequipped to handle life as they knew it.

Not enough psychologists and psychiatrists to handle reintegrating the world - half that had aged and moved on, half that had been gone and suddenly weren't, as though no time had passed. How do you explain a world that's your own, but so inherently different. One that shares too many things than the one you left, but so many things that aren't the same. People that aren't the same.

People that waited until you came home to leave.

The person.

The one person in the whole goddamn world that knew exactly what it was like to wake up in a world like that.

The one selfish asshole who walked away when the world needed him most. 

Bucky exhales slowly, unclenching his metal fist when the whining servos finally breach his consciousness. They've been in Chicago for three weeks, tracking down a lead that he and Sam are fairly certain is a dead end. And everything was fine until Sam had said something, had reminisced, had slipped and said the one word Bucky refused to hear.

He'd slammed out of the apartment they were staying in, out of the building, out of earshot. His skin is blood-hot, his anger ice cold. But even that doesn't stop him from hearing the footsteps. They're careful, which is why Bucky's hand discreetly reaches for his knife. It's not Sam, because Sam knows better. Sharon does as well. 

He doesn't slow. He doesn't glance in the store windows to see who's following him. He adjusts his grip on the handle of his knife and breathes out as the stride lengthens, until the steps fall into rhythm with his.

He recognizes the tread, the smell, the feel of him, but that doesn't mean that he won't stab him. Too many people have tried this trick, and there's enough out there to make it easy for imposters and aliens and, fuck, creatures of the night, to impersonate him. Bucky's easy to haunt.

"You know what was stupid?"

He doesn't stumble at the voice. Doesn't react beyond his hand tightening. "What's that?"

"After the helicopter, when I asked who you were, you told me about my shoes and my mom, and I knew it was you. Sam got so mad at me afterwards, because he said 'You can't read about that in a museum? There's a whole fucking section of the library on what people did to get through the depression and a goddam exhibition on you in the fucking Smithsonian. I could tell you your family history back to the Bubonic Plaque you stupid fucking asshole'."

Bucky doesn't laugh.

"So he wanted to know how I actually knew it was you."

"What'd you say?" He can't let hope kindle in his chest. Their lives are out there for consumption. Maybe not this part of it, but there have been interviews and speculation and enough has been said to question every word.

"You smiled. And I'd know that smile anywhere. And there was no way in the world the Winter Soldier could smile like that."

"I am the Winter Soldier."

"You're _called_ the Winter Soldier." He shrugs and his hands are shoved in his pockets as if he's cold, but Bucky can feel the sunshine heat of him. "It's not who you are."

"So says Captain America?"

"Nah. That's Sam now."

Bucky stops walking and turns, knife in Steve's stomach as he backs him up down an alleyway. Steve goes easily, no fight or resistance. Bucky presses the knife in, pierces material and flesh. The smell of blood is familiar. 

"Who are you?"

"I'm Steve."

"No. Steve is an old fucking man who lived a fucking life that had nothing to do with me. Steve is a man who didn't change shit even thought that's what Steve would have done. He let the world stay shit so he didn't alter a fucking timeline."

"No. Whoever that was, it wasn't Steve. Steve was unstuck in time. Existing but not. Universe after universe after universe until he finally landed on Vormir. Until he could finally complete the job he'd been sent to do." He shrugs as if he's realized he's talking in the third person. "The guardian of the soul stone is Red Skull." 

Bucky doesn't intend to lend any credence to a word being said, fully intends to hear whoever this is out then gut him for having the balls to play with the emotions Bucky has buried in a burning pit of hatred and self-loathing and grief. 

But that. That's ridiculous enough to make him speak. "The fuck?"

"I know." Steve laughs, and it's incredulous. It's a 'can you believe this shit?' "He stared at me like I was the spectre of death, not him. He didn't say anything, just raised his hand like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, opened his mouth like he was going to suck out my soul or something. So I threw the stone at him."

"Of course you did."

"Hey, my aim is good. He caught it."

"He caught it."

"To get the soul stone you must give up something you love. He loved power. Craved it. It was the only thing he had left. And when he touched the stone." Steve shrugs. "Same as the Tesseract."

"You killed death."

"Kinda?"

"Jesus Christ, Rogers."

Steve smiles. "Hey, Buck."

The knife slides in like butter. The metal fist breaks his jaw on the first strike.Blood stains the pristine white of his shirt and the dirty snow. Steve thumps his head on the ground, reaches up and touches his jaw. The blood has stopped spreading.

"I probably deserved that. But it wasn't _actually_ my fault. I would have been on that platform. You were here. You and Sam. I would have come home." He gets to his feet, glancing down at his shirt with a sigh. "I think I kind of freaked Bruce out when I showed up in the lab."

Bucky licks his lips and lets his eyes take Steve in from his snow-damp hair to his blue eyes to his stupid hopeful smile to the breadth of his shoulders and chest, the dark stain on his shirt, the jeans, to his boots. He's only wearing a leather jacket in the below freezing weather. 

"How's your jaw."

Steve touches it again. "Hurts."

"Good." He reaches out for Steve's shirt and uses it to clean his knife before he sheaths it. "Asshole."

"I never got a chance to tell you how much I missed you. I keep getting you back and losing you."

"He said you stayed back with Peggy. That you got your dance and your kiss and the life you should have had. He said you got everything you wanted."

"Everything I wanted was here." He shakes his head. "The man I am now - there's no way I could have been anywhere else but here." He reaches out and touches Bucky's jaw, feather-light. "No when else. No one else."

Bucky sniffs and tells himself it's the cold. "Sam know you're here?"

"No. I knew you'd have a knife. He'll have a gun and bullets really hurt."

"That's why you found me first?"

"Yeah." His thumb traces Bucky's lower lip. "Why else?"

"I've hated you. Him."

"He hurt my friends. I hate him too. But he won't be doing that anymore."

"I kind of hate you still."

"So, status quo."

"Shut up and let's go see Sam so he can shoot you."


End file.
